


Changing of the Seasons

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Thumbelina Fusion, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 07:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: Connor climbs, and when he gets to the top of the tree, he takes deep breaths of the high, thin air and stares out over the horizon. Camp fires make thin columns of smoke. Forest fires, of which he’s seen few, choke the life out of the sky and leave him coughing. But there’s one fire, far in the distance, which isn’t like any of the others. It’s steady, and simple, and trails through the air in an inviting twist, whispering, come see me. Something’s here.He wants… something. It’s hard to say what.





	Changing of the Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the Hankcon Reverse Big Bang 2019 is finally here! Thank you to everyone who's been supportive of me while I talked and complained and fussed, I'm so excited for this to go public! My biggest and most heartfelt love and appreciation to [Ev fishydwarrows/wow__then](https://twitter.com/wow__then), who has been a phenomenal partner as well as a beautiful friend.
> 
> Find more Hankcon RBB19 content at the [WordPress!](https://hankconrbb.wordpress.com/)

Amanda’s garden isn’t wild.

It might look that way from the outside, but Connor sees the effort she puts into keeping everything under careful control. Beyond her borders, the forest grows in any way it likes. Flowers spring up wherever seeds fall, trees grow crooked or out of line. Amanda wouldn’t tolerate any of that. She prunes back unwanted growth, rips out weeds before they even begin to sprout, studies her surroundings with a critical eye and makes long plans that take years to see results.

What she makes is beautiful. There’s no denying that. Human hikers who pass by often stop to look at the round patch Amanda tends, marveling loud enough for Amanda and Connor to hear. Very few of them touch anything. The ring of mushrooms around Amanda’s tree keep the superstitious away, and the rash that springs up on curious hands dissuades the rest. Still…

“It isn’t about the humans,” Amanda tells Connor, putting her teacup down on its saucer. They sit in the hollow of her oak tree. It’s nearly a thousand years old and still getting stronger. Her magic keeps it alive - without it, they’d have no home. “It’s order, Connor. Our little corner of the forest thrives because I make it thrive.”

Her iridescent wings shimmer behind her, flitting gently in and out of their plane of existence. Connor can’t always see them. That bothered him less when he was younger, happy in the simple knowledge that Amanda was his caretaker and she loved him. Now, it’s a reminder that he and Amanda are not the same.

“Is the poison oak necessary?” he asks. It’s a question he’s asked before, and Amanda sighs, as she has before.

“Do you want to be snatched up and carried away? Do you want our home ruined? I’ve been around many more years than you-”

He suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. She reminds him of that all the time.

“-and I know what humans do. Given the chance, they’d cut our tree down and trample all the flowers. I don’t want that for us, Connor.”

“Neither do I,” he says. It’s the only answer he can give.

Amanda stands and comes around the table, looking down at Connor from on high. She cups his chin in her hand, studying him. He studies her back. Her wrinkled, deep brown skin is the only sign of her age, and even then it barely shows how long she’s really been alive. Black braids shine purple and blue, like a dragonfly’s wing, where sunlight comes through a knot in the old trunk and catches them.

“You are safe here,” she tells him, still holding his face. “We both are. Can’t you be happy with that?”

“Yes, Amanda,” he says.

They both know he’s lying.

He climbs to the top of the tree soon after that, on a fine fall afternoon. He pants with exertion and wishes he had Amanda’s wings - or anything, anything that made him like her. He has no magic, no latent abilities, nothing but what Amanda calls his quiet energy, and that does nothing.

He can’t change who he is, though, and it’s of little use to dwell on it. So he climbs, and when he gets to the top, he takes deep breaths of the high, thin air and stares out over the horizon.

Camp fires make thin columns of smoke. Forest fires, of which he’s seen few, choke the life out of the sky and leave him coughing. But there’s one fire, far in the distance, which isn’t like any of the others. It’s steady, and simple, and trails through the air in an inviting twist, whispering, _ come see me. Something’s here_.

He doesn’t ask Amanda about it. She wouldn’t want to know what he was thinking.

After all, Connor isn’t allowed to leave. He thinks he’s full grown - he lost track of how many summers he’d seen several years before, but the marks Amanda made at the base of the oak tree when he was young show he hasn’t gained so much as an inch in quite some time. But that doesn’t matter. Amanda forbade it just the same.

He knows why. It’s to keep him far from humans, from their hands and their feet and their trash - and their fires. Still, he wants… something. It’s hard to say what.

That wanting carries him farther and farther every day. After he climbs down from the tree, he wanders close to the boundaries of Amanda’s garden, the white mushrooms like guards at the edge. He wants to keep going. He feels like he _ has _ to.

The next day, he asks Amanda whether she has a job for him. It’s the wrong move - she suspects him immediately, peering at him with narrowed eyes.

“I have to coerce you, usually,” she says, picking through a tangle at the base of her favorite rosebush. “What changed?”

“I’ve thought about what you said.” Connor puts out a hand and touches the weeds that seem to have grown overnight, threatening to choke the flowers. He feels something magical thrumming underneath the surface. “I should at least try to be happy.”

Amanda sighs. “For however long that lasts.”

She sets him to work near the center of her fairy ring, a stone’s throw from the oak tree. Surely, it’s meant to keep him out of trouble. Connor sows seeds that will bloom when spring comes, vaguely following Amanda’s patterns and designs, until he’s made his way to stand under a mushroom cap. Wedging what’s left of the seeds deep into the lamella above his head, hoping they won’t be found, he takes his first step outside the only home he’s ever known.

Connor wishes he felt sorrier. As he walks into the wider woods, heading toward the plume of smoke, all he feels is a lighthearted certainty. He’s doing the right thing.

* * *

Hank watches summer change to autumn with the same quiet resignation he’s watched the last twelve seasons pass. The colors are beautiful - deep green grass and sprigs of wildflowers fade into yellow, red, and orange blazes reminiscent of his crackling fire in the evenings. Still, his interest is negligible at best. He whiles away his days working on the antique-style wood carvings, and he tries not to think about what he left behind in the city where he was born.

It’s lonely in the middle of the woods. He bought his cabin because it was secluded, nearly a hundred years old and only vaguely retrofitted, and it had been what he wanted. It still is what he wants. Some days, though, the solitude weighs heavier on him than others.

He carves to combat that, loses himself in the slow movement of his tools over the wood he harvests from dead trees. Unfinished clocks sit on a shelf above his workbench, as well as a few other projects he started to stave off boredom born from repetition. His old, lumbering dog curls up on top of his feet, keeping them both in place for hours.

It’s like that one late fall evening, completely unremarkable and just the same as all the days that came before it. Hank’s been at his work for hours, finishing some fine details on the latest of his line of faux-antique clocks. In a week he plans to fire up his disused clunker and drive an hour away, to a town where he sells his wares to a shop that marks them up obscenely and pretends they come from some craftsman from Germany. It’s dishonest, but that doesn’t bother Hank much. It keeps him in cash, which he uses to stockpile groceries, and it fills his time. When he ends a day exhausted and achy from work, it makes him less inclined to reach for a bottle - or worse, his gun.

Sumo hears something first. He lifts his head so quickly it hits the underside of the bench, making Hank jump.

“Jesus,” he says, his voice cracking with disuse. He bends over to check on his dog, reaching to pet him, but Sumo’s up and making low, rumbling noises before he can reach. “What are you fussing about?”

Whatever it is, it’s by the bay window at the front of the house. Sumo makes his way toward it, pausing to sniff everywhere. In the brief moments of silence between dog grumbles, Hank strains to hear exactly what’s bothering him. It’s nothing - at least, nothing audible.

“You’re getting senile, Sumo.”

Sumo glances back at him and wags his tail a few times before he snaps to attention again.

Hank laughs. “Maybe we both are.”

He gets up to check anyway, grunting in protest as his knees crack and his hips complain. Placing the whittling knife on the table, Hank squints to look out the window as he moves to stand at Sumo’s side, bending a little to scratch behind one of the dog’s ears.

Leaves pile high on his grounds, and with more falling every day, he knows he’ll have to clear them out soon. There are a thousand things to do before winter - buying antifreeze, stocking up on wood, making sure he has nonperishables in case of a winter storm - but another little growl from Sumo takes his thoughts away from the future. He scratches Sumo again.

“Fox in the leaves, maybe?” he asks. Sumo puts his paws up on the bay window seat and presses his nose to the corner of one pane. Hank shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re sniffing, bud, but I’m not going exploring so you can chase down a squirrel.”

Sumo whines, long and low, looking up at Hank sideways with pleading eyes.

“You’ll get over it.”

He presses one finger to the long white stripe between Sumo’s eyes, gently stroking along the fur up to the ridge of his brow. Sumo sighs, and that should be the end of it all - except before Hank turns away, he sees something move on the external side of his windowsill.

Just a spider, he thinks, it wouldn’t be the first he’s seen… but this would be the biggest. Like a goddamn tarantula. He looks again, wondering if he should slip his shoe free so he can beat the hell out of whatever abomination has come to skulk around his home. Tentatively, he leans in closer. Whatever the thing is, it’s alive. At his approach, it wraps itself up in a tight ball, indistinguishable from the fabric wrapped around it. It seems to be shaking.

“All right,” Hank says to Sumo, watching it with a raised eyebrow. “Maybe you’re not crazy.”

He uses one leg to shove the dog away from the window and unlatches a panel, hoping he can ease it open without knocking the thing off and down into the grass. Sumo moves without complaint, but he quivers with anticipation and his high-strung need to stick his nose everywhere it doesn’t belong, especially when it’s least convenient to Hank.

The creature doesn’t move when Hank opens the window. At least, it doesn’t uncurl.

“Maybe somebody lost a pet rat.”

Hank hesitates before reaching out to pick it up, wondering if a rat lost in the woods for however long might go feral, or have some kind of rabies. The poor thing is still shivering, though, scared or hiding from the bitter wind heralding winter’s arrival, and the least Hank can do is take it in before he… does something with it. He curls one hand around the little body, already thinking through the next steps, whether the vet in town might know what to do. It’s warm.

“Come on,” he says, and he begins to lift it up.

Something sharp digs its way into the pad of his finger.

Hank bites off his own swearing and rears back from the window, dropping the little monster inside the house. He picks up his feet, pushing Sumo back in case it goes for him next, but it stands up in place and shakes itself off. It has two legs, Hank notes, and the brown and off-white fabric become pants and a shirt in miniature, like clothes for a doll. The creature is just that, too: a doll come to life. It’s shaped like a man, and has shoes, tiny hands holding an unbent safety pin, and a wild tumble of brown hair. He can’t see much of the detail in its eyes, wide as they are. It’s far too small.

Hank says, “Huh.” He’s too shocked to think of anything else.

“I’m sorry.” The little thing speaks in a little voice - not shrill the way he might have expected, like he’d found a cartoon mouse. Just appropriately sized. “But if you touch me, I’ll hurt you again.”

Glancing at his finger, Hank wipes the blood beading there on his shirt. “Okay. I won’t touch you.”

“Good.”

It won’t lower the safety pin.

“Can I…?” Hank half-squats, putting his hands in his pockets. “Just to look at you.”

“What if I don’t want to be looked at?”

Hank huffs. “You’re pretty bold, aren’t you?”

The creature shows a sliver of its teeth in a smile for barely an instant before it closes its mouth again. “I am what I have to be.”

After another lingering moment hovering in the air between them, the point of the safety pin goes down. Hank gets to his knees, grunting a fair amount.

He feels... surprisingly sane. The sudden appearance of a miniature person in his house should have prompted a call to his psychiatrist, a woman he hasn’t seen in a little under three years, but none of this feels fake. It’s stunningly real, down to the sting lingering in his finger.

Closer, he can see that the creature’s eyes are brown, warm and so deep they almost blend into the pinprick of its pupil.

“So I’m not imagining you,” he says. It’s a useless thing to say. If he was imagining it, he has no reason to think it would tell him the truth. Still, despite how much he’s already adjusted to this shift in his understanding, he needs a little time to process.

It shrugs. “Not unless I’m imagining you.”

Hank shrugs back. “I guess not. It’d make sense for a hallucination of mine to have a smart mouth, though.”

“What’s your name?”

“Hank.” He entertains the thought of sticking out a finger for it to shake, but he might get pricked again for his effort. “He’s Sumo.”

Sumo joins Hank on the floor, crawling on his belly toward their tiny guest. It takes a step back like it’s planning to run, but Sumo stops short and lets out another gusty sigh. The strength of it ruffles the creature’s hair. Closing its eyes, it lets out a quiet sound Hank thinks might be a laugh.

“This is your home?” it asks, pushing its hair back into place.

“Has been for about three years now.”

Slowly, it looks away from Hank at the rest of the living room, gaze flicking back to check that neither he nor Sumo have moved. Then, it seems to lose interest in him entirely, turning in circles, the safety pin loose in its grip. There isn’t much of interest here, besides Hank’s workbench - probably not visible for such a small creature - and a fair amount of mess he hasn’t bothered to clean up. Even so, it looks around with clear wonder, like Hank’s shitty second-hand furniture was made out of gold.

It’s a pretty little thing. Creature. Person. Hank can’t begin to guess whether it is anything more than just human-shaped, whether it would be better to think of it as a man even if very small.

“Hey,” Hank says gently, hoping to catch its - his? - attention. “Not to be rude, but… what are you?”

Tiny cheeks go a little pink, like airbrushed paint on a porcelain doll. Hank would almost call it cute.

“I’m Connor.”

“Okay. Not what I asked you, though.”

“It’s a very rude question.”

Hank almost laughs, but Connor gives him a look that tells him it wouldn’t be appreciated. Funny how such a small thing could have such a strong personality. He commands the room as easily as if he’d been six feet tall, arresting in his fragility as much as his determination. Sumo could kill him if they weren’t careful, and so could Hank, but he has a feeling that Connor would put up a hell of a fight first.

“How else am I supposed to figure it out? I haven’t ever seen anything like you before.”

“Well, no.” Connor puts the safety pin down and fusses with his hair again, pushing the curls this way and that. He glances around him, frowns, and drops his hands. “We don’t let you see us, usually. Do you have a mirror?”

Hank nearly misses the question, so focused on _ us_. “Are there more of you?”

Connor squints at Hank suspiciously. Hank puts up his hands.

“I’m not looking to go on some kind of brownie hunt. You came here. I’m just curious.”

“What are brownies?”

“You’re still not answering my questions.”

When Connor smiles again, it’s a little mischievous. “Okay,” he says, reaching for the safety pin. Hooking it through his pants at the waist, he pushes it closed with both hands and lets it hang. “How about we make it fair. Make a deal.”

Hank raises an eyebrow. “Always heard you’re not supposed to make deals with fairies.”

Connor sags a little, though he stiffens quickly to hide it. Hank misses a lot of the subtler emotions crossing his face, things he knows he’d easily catch if Connor were the right size, but he still knows enough about body language to recognize he’s made some kind of faux pas. It hurts, seeing Connor’s face fall and knowing he messed something up. He almost apologizes before Connor clears his throat.

“I’m not a fairy. I have no magic at all.”

Hank decides they can table the magic discussion for later. One thing at a time.

“Then I guess a deal is fine. Who goes first?”

“I do.” Connor shifts his weight between his feet, weighing his options carefully. Finally, he settles on, “Tell me what a brownie is.”

“Uh… depends on the folklore.” Hank thinks back to the books he read when he was younger, some of the stories he’d read to his son. The reminder of Cole aches, just like it always does, but he tries to focus in on what he can remember. “Usually they show up when people are sleeping and do chores for them. Brownies would also cause trouble if you tried to give them clothes.”

Connor wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think that exists.”

“No,” Hank says. “Neither do I. Can I ask what you are again, or is that still rude?”

“It’s still rude.”

“Not a fairy, though.”

Scuffing his feet on the floor, Connor won’t meet Hank’s eyes. “No. Not a brownie, either. You can have another question.”

Generous of him, Hank thinks, snorting. “Why did you come here?”

Connor’s reticence melts away. He looks around the room again, eyes bright, until his gaze lands on Hank’s fireplace. Pointing, he says, “That. Your fire.”

“My fire?”

“When it burned, I could see the smoke from my tree. I wanted to know what was making it, so I… I came.” He folds his arms, like he’s protecting himself from the cold. “You weren’t supposed to know I was here.”

Hank nods, thoughtfully. “What were you curled up on the sill for? You’re not hurt.”

He expects Connor to insist he have his turn, but he already seems to have forgotten their game.

“I was tired.” He sighs. “I am tired, I don’t know why I stopped feeling tired.”

“Adrenaline, probably,” Hank says. “Stabbing somebody will do that.”

Connor smiles again. His natural smile is crooked and almost goofy, like he hasn’t had a lot of practice at it. “I didn’t hurt you.”

“Not much.”

They look at each other in silence. Hank has the distinct impression that he’s being examined, and it makes him want to turn away, but he lets Connor look. Whatever the little fellow sees - an old man, probably, or at least a tired one - he doesn’t comment. Instead, he gives Sumo a strange look before turning back to Hank.

“Will he bite me?”

Hank hums, considering. Sumo swishes his tail over the floor, watching Connor with his big, soulful eyes.

“I don’t know,” Hank says truthfully. “He’s sweet, mostly, but he’s not very well trained. I don’t want you getting near his teeth.”

Connor’s frown could be seen from space. It’s almost a pout, the downturn of his mouth immediately pushing Hank to start thinking of another solution. He can’t fathom why, besides the fact that he’s painfully soft-hearted. Connor came so far, after all, far enough that he’d had to rest on the windowsill instead of just going back home.

At that thought, Hank glances up at the open window. Outside, the sun is barely still lighting the sky. Blue turns to purple turns to black, and Hank knows he can’t send Connor away now.

“Don’t stab me,” Hank warns. Connor gives him a sharp look, like Hank’s set him on edge rather than soothed him, but he doesn’t move as Hank slowly puts out his hand toward Connor, palm up. “I’ll play defense. You sit in my hand, I’ll be able to get you out quick if he starts acting funny.”

Connor puts his hand on Hank’s thumb. The width of Connor’s spread fingers spans the same distance as Hank’s thumbnail, so fine and delicate that Hank has a quick pang of fear that he’ll break them. He’s already bigger than most people, but Connor makes him feel like a clumsy giant.

“You won’t squeeze?” Connor asks.

“I won’t squeeze.” Hank takes hold of Sumo’s collar in his left hand and waits for Connor to climb into his right.

Connor’s careful, hesitant, putting points of quick pressure on Hank’s palm as he walks across. He’s heavier than Hank might have guessed. Primly, he drops down and sits with his thighs together, feet hanging over the edge of Hank’s hand. “Okay,” he says. “I’m ready.”

Folding his thumb over Connor’s lap like a seatbelt, he lifts Connor up slowly. Little shoes dangle in the air, and Connor wraps his arms around Hank’s thumb with a sharp jump. Again, it strikes Hank that Connor is incredibly brave. Foolish, too, maybe, for trusting so readily… but Hank won’t prove him wrong.

“Hold out your hand for him to smell,” Hank says. He brings Connor in a bit closer to Sumo, wondering if he’s making a horrible mistake and putting Connor in unnecessary danger - but Sumo doesn’t fight Hank’s grip on his collar. Inhaling softly, Sumo seems content to sniff and snuffle in Connor’s direction. His tail swishes audibly against the floor, a gentle back-and-forth, and he makes no other sound.

“Oh,” Connor says softly. He leans over Hank’s thumb, reaching until he touches Sumo’s nose with his fingers. “It’s wet.”

“Dog noses are like that.”

Connor laughs. Hank barely hears it over another one of Sumo’s sighs, but he feels it. Connor’s stomach jumps under his thumb.

That’s definitely a strange sensation.

“Hello, Sumo,” Connor murmurs. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He leans again, so Hank brings him a little bit closer.

“He’s all right,” Hank says in his best soothing voice, not in answer to any question or to either of them in particular. He’s still got a tight grip on Sumo, but his dog is happy to close his eyes and let Connor pet at the white streak up his muzzle, running his hand there the same way Hank had touched Sumo earlier.

Connor squeezes Hank’s thumb. “I think I like dogs.”

When Connor sees how dark it is outside, he readily agrees to stay in Hank’s house overnight. He still won’t answer any questions about going home, or where home is, but he seems to imply that he’ll get there fine on his own once the sun is up. That’s good enough for Hank, for now. Arranging a place for Connor to sleep is its own issue. He objects to being lifted somewhere he can’t climb down from, and yet Hank doesn’t want him anywhere Sumo could get him if the dog changes his mind.

After ten minutes of arguing, Hank piles a blanket on the window seat. “I don’t sleep out in the open,” Connor says. “I never have.”

“Well, I’m not putting you on my pillow,” Hank snaps, finally pulling the window shut. “Pick something or I’ll leave you to figure this out on your own.”

Connor gives the hill of blanket a disdainful look and glances out into the rest of the room.

“There,” he says, pointing. Hank doesn’t see it right away, so Connor tugs on his fingers until Hank flattens his palm and lets him climb on. It’s funny, in a way, that Connor’s decided this is completely fine now. Hank’s glad for Connor’s trust, but he feels a bit like a jungle gym.

Connor guides him across the room with a few sharp little directions, and then - to Hank’s horror - he jumps from his hand onto the shelf above Hank’s workbench. As Hank swears, he pokes his head through the hole in one unfinished cuckoo clock. It’s bigger than his usual work, a custom order the shopkeep passed on to Hank a few months ago. He hadn’t asked about it again, so Hank set it aside.

“I like this,” Connor announces. “I’ll sleep here.”

“In the clock?” Hank asks. “Seriously?”

Connor hoists himself up into the hole, wriggles his way through, and disappears for a moment. When he pokes his head back out, looking so much like the cuckoo Hank hasn’t installed yet, it makes Hank smile.

“You said to pick somewhere. I pick here. Although, I’ll still need some things.”

Hank spends another ten minutes busying himself around the house, tending to Connor’s demands. It’s a little annoying, being ordered around in his own house, but the novelty of Connor hasn’t quite worn off enough for Hank to resent him. The things he asks for are so singular, little comforts Hank wouldn’t have thought of, that he wishes he could properly see inside the clock without removing the back, like opening a doll’s house.

The last thing Connor requests is bedding. Hank has an old shirt he was going to cut up for rags, so he takes a pair of scissors to it and makes Connor-sized pieces. As Connor pulls them through the hole, he pauses and looks out at Hank, holding his gaze. His little face is serious, almost contemplative.

“Hank,” he says, like he’s testing the way it feels on his tongue. “I didn’t know what I would find here. You’ve been very good to me.”

Hank tries not to melt, unsettled by the way his stupid soft heart does a little jig in his chest. He had forgotten how nice it was to be needed, or even just to be around another person.

Shrugging it off, Hank puts both hands on the clock. “Couldn’t just turn you out. Hang on.”

He carries it across the room, walking carefully so he doesn’t shake Connor’s hard work apart, and sets the clock on the window seat. Sumo claims the blanket, abandoned on the floor, and curls up like he intends to sleep there instead of on Hank’s bed.

“Will you leave the fire?” Connor asks.

“Nah,” Hank says, “it’s not safe. I’m gonna put it out.”

Connor hums. He’s disappointed, but this isn’t something Hank’s willing to capitulate on. As he tends to the fire, he wonders if he’s imagining the weight of Connor’s eyes on him, if such small eyes could have weight at all. He still isn’t sure how to feel about any of this, really, besides… enchanted, he supposes. It’s like a fairy tale, the sort he used to like, and the sort his son liked. Cole would have loved -

Hank won’t let that go any farther. He clears his throat, gives himself a shake, and rolls over a log with the poker to be sure it isn’t waiting to catch again.

“Good night,” says Connor.

Hank turns to look at the clock. He feels that tug of fondness again, and it nearly hurts.

“Night,” he grumbles, and without another word, he leaves the room and flops face up onto his bed.

* * *

Connor decides the next morning that he doesn’t want to go home. Not yet, anyway. He makes up his mind before the sun rises, laying in the nest he’s made out of Hank’s old shirt. It isn’t as soft as his bed in Amanda’s tree, but it is warm, and it smells like… some kind of spice he can’t place. It’s what Hank had smelled like, if a bit fainter. He likes it.

That isn’t the only reason he wants to stay, though. He likes this place, and Sumo, who snores from his station next to the window seat, and he likes seeing how humans live. It’s different from being with Amanda, and different from spending his days meandering around the same enclosed space with nothing to do.

A voice in the back of his mind that reminds him of Amanda’s tells him that he’s only traded one coop for another, and that he’ll want to fly away from Hank soon enough.

It might be true. He’ll handle that when the time comes.

Connor lingers in bed until he starts to hear noises coming from somewhere else in the house. He almost doesn’t want to get up. Eager as he is to learn more about Hank and about humans in general, he’s quite comfortable and warm. And the smell - he doesn’t want to leave the smell.

As a compromise, he pulls one piece of fabric from the pile he’s made and slings it around his shoulders. The corners are tough to manipulate, a bit big for him, but he still manages to tie it off so that he’s made a cloak. He wonders if Hank will say anything about it.

“Sumo,” he hears Hank whisper - so close, suddenly, loud even though he’s speaking in a whisper. “Come on, bud, let’s go outside.”

Connor goes to the hole in the clock and sticks his head and shoulders through, blinking against the light starting to trickle in through the windows. Hank blinks too as Connor emerges, taken aback at his sudden appearance. He looks tired still, and he’s dressed in a pair of baggy grey pants and a long-sleeved shirt that’s ridden up on his belly. They must be night clothes.

“Well, fuck,” Hank says. His voice is deeper than it was the night before, and has that early morning rasp Connor’s experienced himself many times. It never sounded so deep on him. “I thought maybe I’d dreamed you up.”

“No,” Connor says. He hefts himself out of the hole and drops onto the seat, reaching up to fix his hair. “I’m still real. I’ve never heard that word before.”

“What word?”

“Fuck.”

Hank furrows his brows and draws his head back, looking almost offended. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Why not?” Connor asks. He carefully picks his way to the edge of the seat and peeks over, looking for Sumo. The big dog hasn’t moved from his spot yet, but he does turn his head so he can look up at Connor. “You said it.”

“Sounds wrong, coming out of your mouth. Up, Sumo.”

Grumbling, Sumo gets to his feet. He puts his head over the seat and pushes himself in Connor’s direction, blinking his massive brown eyes. In the distance, Connor can see his tail wagging.

“Where are you going?” he asks. Carefully, he touches Sumo’s muzzle, still wary of those big teeth hiding under slobbering jowls. Sumo huffs a strong breath and nudges himself in a little closer.

“The yard. Sumo has to pee.” Hank reaches down and takes Sumo’s collar again, but Connor doesn’t really know if that’s necessary anymore. He likes the idea that the dog’s taken to him enough that neither of them need to worry. It makes him feel special.

“Can I come too?”

Hank lets Sumo go and offers his hand to Connor the same way he had the night before, folding him in carefully so that he won’t slip free from his palm.

The wind outside has the first bite of winter in it, cold and stinging against Connor’s cheeks. He’s glad he thought to make his cloak, both for the protection it gives him and the way he can duck into it, covering his nose and mouth so he breathes in nothing but Hank’s smell. Sumo, with his thick, warm fur, bounds off into the yard. He doesn’t care that fall is nearly over.

Hank shuffles his slippers against the step, almost doing a little jig against the chill.

“This weather sucks,” he says, sticking his free hand deep into a pocket. “I’m going to have to deal with all this before it gets too bad.”

“Deal with what?” Connor asks.

“The leaves, firewood, all that.”

“You don’t sleep through the winter?”

Hank laughs like that’s a joke, but when Connor doesn’t laugh with him, he lifts Connor higher so they can see each other. “Do you?”

Connor shrugs, feeling a little foolish. He ought to have known humans would be different. “There’s nothing else to do. Nothing grows, and there isn’t much food.”

Hank hums, considering what he’s said. He’s a thoughtful man, Connor’s learning, careful and pondering without being slow. “You’d probably better go soon, then,” he says. “If you’re supposed to hibernate. Winter’s coming on pretty quick. How long will it take you to get back?”

It had taken him a few days’ walk to make it to Hank’s cabin, and that taken at a somewhat leisurely pace. Walking back wouldn’t take anywhere near so long - Connor could feel something tugging at him, calling him home, and that had to be Amanda’s distinctive brand of magic. She’d guide his feet and pick up his speed. Still, he had already decided that he doesn’t want to leave. Not until he’s ready.

So he lies.

“It took me some time to get here.” He shivers against a resurgence of wind, playing it up a little so Hank will pity him and think twice about sending him away. “I don’t know if I could make it back in time.”

Hank pulls Connor in closer to his chest when he shakes, putting up his other hand behind Connor’s back to shield him from the worst of the chill. “I could take you there,” he says. “My legs are a lot longer than yours.”

Connor frowns. “I don’t know that you could find it,” he lies again. “Humans aren’t supposed to know where it is.”

Sighing, Hank brings Connor even closer to his chest and then up to his shoulder, gesturing for him to climb on. Connor does, delighted by this new mode of transportation, and tugs gently on Hank’s hair to maintain his balance until he can sit. Once both Hank’s hands are free, he stuffs them back into his pockets.

“Nothing to be done, I guess,” he says.

Sitting here, Connor can feel the rise and fall of Hank’s shoulders with each breath. His hair brushes against Connor with each passing breeze, soft grey strands tickling his cheeks, and it makes Connor’s stomach twinge. He _ likes _ it here.

“I don’t eat a lot,” Connor muses. “Not compared to you.”

“Hey,” Hank laughs. “Watch it.”

“All I mean is, I won’t put you out much, if I stay. Will I?”

Hank goes quiet again. Sumo, having finished sniffing every corner of Hank’s yard like his life depended on it, lifts his leg against a tree.

The biggest disadvantage of sitting on Hank’s shoulder is that Connor can’t see his face anymore. He considers leaning out to look, to try and ascertain whether he is actually disappointed at the thought of keeping Connor, even in the short term. Harmless lying is one thing. No matter how much he doesn’t like going back to Amanda with his tail between his legs, he won’t force Hank to house him if he doesn’t want to.

Finally, Hank says, “Cover your ears.” He puts his fingers to his mouth and whistles, a high, piercing sound that Connor’s glad he muffled, and Sumo comes bounding back to them. As Hank turns around to open the door, he adds, “I think I’d like it, actually. If you stayed for a while.”

“It isn’t an inconvenience?”

“No.”

Connor clings tight to Hank’s shirt as they walk inside, the ground rushing along sideways very far beneath him. He isn’t too worried, though. Hank won’t drop him.

“I have some work I need to do once I’m dressed,” Hank says. He carefully collects Connor and sets him down on a table covered in tools and bits of wood shavings. “You want to watch? Maybe I could use your eye on some of the smaller details.”

“Yes,” Connor says, too eagerly. “I want you to teach me everything.”

Hank smiles. It’s a sheepish sort of look, and it puts the gap between his front teeth on full display. “At least you’ll go back home with a trade, I guess.”

Connor waits for him as he changes, wandering over the table and picking up things to examine them as he goes. He won’t stay forever, he promises himself, picking up a long implement with a beveled edge and examining it. Just long enough to satisfy his curiosity. He’s already going to be in terrible trouble. A few days - or a week, maybe - won’t make that much difference.

* * *

Connor stays all winter. It makes Hank feel guilty - Connor belongs out in the forest, somewhere, and his vague hints imply that he has someone waiting for him. Hank wonders who they are, sometimes. Probably not a lover, or if it is, Connor doesn’t treat them particularly well. A parent, maybe - but regardless, Connor’s not interested. Hank stops asking whether he’d like to go home after two weeks, when Connor stops pretending he cares. He hangs on Hank’s every word, and follows him around the house when he isn’t exploring on his own, and he helps with Hank’s work.

That’s the best of it, Hank thinks, besides the company. His eyesight is still good, and his hands shake less now that he’s cut back his drinking significantly, but smaller details have always been harder. With Connor’s little hands and keen eyes, he’s able to put in finer work on the clocks than he ever has before.

“What do you think?” he asks, turning the clock so Connor can see the front.

Connor muses, his hand under his chin. The light is dying outside, earlier and earlier every day, and the clouds threaten snowfall, but candlelight throws Connor’s shadow across the table. It makes him look taller. 

“Vines, I think,” he says, tracing a line he must be imagining. “And leaves.”

Nodding, Hank opens his toolbox and holds it out to Connor. There’s a pocket where they keep the tools Hank adjusted so they can be used by tiny hands. Connor digs inside it until he pulls out a chisel.

“I was thinking maybe roses.” Hank turns the clock as Connor studies it, giving him a different angle. “Like a relief on the sides. They’d suit the grain, look-”

Connor shakes his head even before Hank’s finished talking. “No roses,” he says, and he says it so seriously that Hank has to wonder why. Before he can ask, Connor’s moved on. “I was picturing grapes, like a vineyard.”

He’s right, Hank realizes. It would look much better.

“When have you been to a vineyard?” Hank asks.

Connor sits cross-legged and reaches for the pencil he’d set by. Hank had snapped it in half for him so it was less unwieldy. Tracing a pattern, he manages to shrug at the same time. “I haven’t,” he says. “I’ve heard about them.”

“Enough to carve one on the side of a clock?”

Humming, Connor shoots a look over his shoulder. It’s playful, almost, and mischievous. “Guess we’ll find out.” Then he winks, which is the worst. Hank pointedly refuses to acknowledge it and moves on to a project he’s been tinkering with for a long time, pretending to fiddle with it so he doesn’t have to talk.

The clock looks good when Connor’s finished with it. Hank handles the bigger details, leaf engravings and other features he makes out of spare wood and attaches after. At the top, he glues down a bird that he’d carved and Connor had engraved, a joint effort. He likes the way it looks, and he likes the satisfaction on Connor’s face when he walks around it in a full circle and nods his approval.

When he drives it into town and shows it to the antique store owner, he compliments Hank on his improvement and offers an extra fifty dollars for the “unique” characteristics. Hank doesn’t tell Connor about the money - he doesn’t know how well Connor understands money - but he does say that the buyer was pleased, and Connor looks pleased, too.

“Maybe you have a future in this line of work,” Hank says, pulling groceries out of paper bags. Connor pokes around at what he’s bought, smelling and inspecting and pulling faces at the jars of preserves. He may not like it now, Hank thinks, but if it snows badly and they run out of food, he’s going to have to get used to it.

“Maybe I do,” Connor says.

That takes Hank by surprise - it shouldn’t, Connor’s made it perfectly clear that he’s happy to stay, but it still means something.

He doesn’t know what to make of Connor.

Certainly, Connor doesn’t make the understanding easy. They talk, sometimes, about their lives before they met each other, and what they know of the world. Connor likes chatting, but as soon as topics turn to things more personal, more probing, he stops answering Hank’s questions. So far, Hank’s gathered that he lives in a tree, and that he’s probably done so all his life… but that’s it. There’s almost nothing else.

To be fair, he thinks to himself, he hasn’t told Connor about Cole. That isn’t a problem, really; as much as his developing friendship with Connor means to him - too much, almost, the side effect of being alone in the woods for so long - Connor keeps secrets, too. Hank is allowed to protect himself.

Sometimes, though, he wants to tell him. In spite of Connor’s size, he’s clearly an adult and has had his own experiences. Connor might not be able to directly relate, but maybe he would understand anyway.

At the end of February, Hank gets the impulse to tell him again. Connor’s sitting at the top of the lid to Hank’s trunk watching him load the car, looking for all the world like a miniature mountain climber at the summit of a rusty black peak. His hair blows in the wind, flopping forward into his face no matter how often he brushes it back. Above the bit of Hank’s shirt he’d repurposed into a cloak, Connor’s nose and cheeks are a distinct cherry red. A few first flakes of snow fall and land in Connor’s hair, shining like a halo before they melt.

“You won’t be long,” Connor ascertains. “A few hours.”

“Right,” Hank says. He sets the last clock in the trunk and reaches up so Connor can climb down. Once he’s safe in Hank’s hand, Hank closes the trunk with a loud clunk. “Maybe less. I’m not staying in town long.”

“Do you think you should go? With the snow falling?”

Hank carries Connor inside and sets him down on the workbench. They have a system of jerry-rigged ladders and lifts in place for Connor to use, making Hank’s house look like the world’s most convoluted game of Mouse Trap, but Connor stays where Hank puts him. He folds his arms, and waits for Hank’s answer.

“It’s fine,” Hank says. “Barely a flurry. I’ve seen worse.”

That’s when it hits. He wants to say something. The memory of Cole presses down heavy on his heart, and he nearly admits the truth - but the moment passes.

Hank sticks out his finger for Connor to shake.

“Listen. You’ve made a good partner.”

Connor takes the tip of Hank’s finger in one hand. He doesn’t shake. Instead, he holds Hank there, arresting him, and he looks up with his wide brown eyes and pins Hank in place.

“So have you,” he says.

Hank pulls away and scratches his hand through his beard. It chases away the strange, lingering prickle in his fingers.

“Want me to bring you back anything?”

“No.” Connor turns away to look at a piece of wood Hank left for him to practice on. He turns it over in his hands, and Hank feels summarily dismissed.

He waves his hand at Connor’s back and heads out, a bit awkwardly, locking the door behind him.

The car radio doesn’t work this far away from town. Hank tries not to think too hard in the silence, desperately letting his mind wander. It comes back to the same thing, again and again. He can’t - he _ can’t_, he won’t even put a name to what it is he isn’t feeling, because there’s nothing he can do about it. Nothing. He won’t entertain the notion, or consider the way Connor makes him comfortable, how he feels at home for the for the first time in years.

Hank misses having a family. He misses having Cole.

He’s thinking of Cole when he drives over a patch of black ice, and when his car skids, and when the back fishtails. He thinks of Cole the whole time.

* * *

Connor keeps himself occupied for a while with the piece of practice wood. He makes abstract carvings, engraves curls and a few floral details, until it can’t keep him engaged anymore. Then he climbs up to the window seat and sits, staring outside. The snow comes down sporadically at first, in stops and starts, and then it gets heavier. He doesn’t know why he watches it so intently, or why he feels so uneasy.

Sumo seems to feel it, too. He paces back and forth, making low noises in his throat.

“Here.” Connor pats the window seat with both hands. Sumo lumbers over and drops his head down where Connor can reach, looking at him in a cross-eyed sort of way. He whines. “It’s all right,” Connor says, touching Sumo’s nose. “We’re fine.”

Even so, he gets up to bury his face in Sumo’s ear and breathes in, slowly, taking what comfort he can from the warmth and the distinct dog smell he’s grown to love.

When Hank comes home, Connor’s laying between Sumo’s shoulder blades, staring at the ceiling while Sumo dozes in front of the fireplace. The sound of keys in the door makes the dog shoot up, quicker than he usually moves, and Connor goes tumbling off. Normally, that would send Hank into a fit - Connor’s fallen from greater heights before, but Hank seems to think he’ll break every time. This time, as Connor gets back to his feet, he’s almost disappointed to realize that Hank hasn’t noticed.

“Hello,” he says, adjusting his clothes. “How was it?”

“Didn’t go,” Hank grunts. “Car trouble.” He shuts the door and locks it again, his face turned away so Connor can’t see his expression, and without another word, he heads for the fridge.

Connor frowns. Clambering back up to the workbench, he tries to catch a glimpse of Hank’s face or to hear whether he’s quietly mumbling to himself, like he does when he’s deep in thought. He can’t catch either. Still, he notices that Hank’s clothes are wet like he’s been standing out in the snow for a while, unusual for what should have been a quick business deal and a long drive. Hank is shivering, too, his hand trembling where it rests on the door handle. That unease comes back with a vengeance, putting a pit in Connor’s stomach that feels bigger than he is, bigger than them both. Something is wrong.

When Hank closes the refrigerator, he’s holding a few bottles in one hand, fingers wrapped around the necks. Connor’s seen these before. Hank had called it beer, the first time he took a bottle out, and he’d even let Connor try a sip from the cap. Connor hated it. It left his head swimming and made his stomach sour, but all it seemed to do to Hank was make him quiet.

“I used to drink a lot of this,” he’d said, folding his fingers together over the bottle. “Not so much now. It isn’t good for me.”

He hadn’t had any in a few weeks, before this. Now, as Hank pops off a cap and drains half a bottle in one long drink, Connor bites his lip and wonders what any of this means. Whether he should be worried.

It’s too late for that, though. He’s already worried.

“Hank,” Connor says.

Hank’s gaze slides over to him for the first time. His eyes are beautiful - so blue, nestled under a heavy brow, normally clear and gentle. They’re clouded, now, like Hank isn’t really seeing anything. He finishes off his beer with one more pull, and leaves the bottle on the counter.

“Still not sure I didn’t dream you,” Hank says. Normally, when Hank teases him about being imaginary, it makes Connor feel good, almost like he’s special. He doesn’t like it now. Hank’s voice is too rough, too low, rumbling like an oncoming storm. “Maybe I lost my shit ages ago, and you’re just something I made up to keep from getting lonely.” He snorts, and cracks open another beer. “Wouldn’t that be pathetic.”

Connor turns to watch as Hank walks across the room and drops into his armchair, still holding two bottles in his hand. He leaves the full one on the floor and perches the other in his lap, twirling it around by the mouth.

“I think I’d know,” Connor says, “if I wasn’t real. Most phantasms do.”

Hank snorts. “Right.” He takes another drink. “You’d know more about it than I would. Fairies, and shit.”

Connor’s tired of running back and forth across the house trying to keep up with Hank. He’s tired of shouting too, so he slides back down the ladder and walks across the floor until he’s come around the front of Hank’s chair.

“You seem unhappy,” he says.

Hank doesn’t laugh. Connor thought he might, with the way his mood is going, but instead Hank covers his face with a hand and sits in silence for what feels like an hour. The clock ticks on, though, reminding Connor of each second, and only a handful of them go by before he’s acknowledged again.

Lifting his head, Hank meets Connor with a stare that almost looks… haunted. “That’s an understatement, Con.”

“Why?”

Hank takes another drink. In an instant, his face is pinched, closed off. “It’s none of your business.”

That stings more than if Hank had told him he couldn’t understand.

“I thought you liked having me here,” he says. He sounds petulant, but he feels petulant - he wants to be taken seriously, to be treated like he’s a companion and not a child. He’d liked that about living with Hank, it was so different from being under Amanda’s control.

Hank slaps his thigh with an open palm. “Fucking hell,” he snaps, “that doesn’t mean you have to live in my pocket. My life is my life.”

“But if I could help you-”

“Nobody can help me, what don’t you understand about that? Doesn’t matter how good things go, or for how long. I end up here.” He takes another drink. The second bottle is almost gone.

“Why?” Connor asks, struggling to keep himself from shedding the frustrated tears beading in his eyes.

“You get to keep your secrets. I get to keep mine.”

The swamp of misery in which Connor feels like he’s drowning slowly dries up, fading away as he watches Hank drain the beer. Instead, he feels angry. He hears the steel in his own voice when he says, “That’s not fair.”

Hank leaves the empty bottle on the floor next to the unopened one. “Life isn’t fair, Connor. Never has been, never will be.”

Before Hank’s fingers touch the neck of the third bottle, his third in less than ten minutes, Connor’s had enough. He marches across the floor and gives it a shove with both hands, knocking the bottle over and sending it skittering. It doesn’t break, but it clatters, and when Sumo hears the noise he tucks his tail between his legs and runs into the bedroom. Connor’s sorry, but only for an instant. He opens his mouth, and words pour out, even before he can think of what it is he’s saying.

“Is this why you live alone?” he asks, gesturing angrily at the bottle, still rolling. “Is it because you push everyone else away?”

Hank pushes himself off the armchair with a speed and a vehemence that sends Connor stumbling backwards. He’s never felt frightened of Hank before, not even when he’d pricked him with the safety pin - he hadn’t known Hank then, couldn’t begin to dream that the giant picking him up would turn out to be someone he’d grow to care about so much. Now, though, as Hank takes a step, fear electrifies him like he’s been struck by lightning. On instinct, animal and encompassing, Connor collapses to his knees and curls into a ball.

Nothing happens. He hears a heavy footstep, but he isn’t stepped on or grabbed. Peeking between his fingers, he looks up and half expects to see Hank towering over him.

Hank is bent double, one hand on the armchair. The other is over his face again. He lets out a weak sound, like a wounded animal, and Connor’s chest throbs like he’s been punched.

Hank wouldn’t hurt him.

“Hank,” he says, scrambling to his feet. “Please, I-”

Hank stands up straight, refusing to look at him once more. When he speaks, his voice is thick like he’s trying not to cry. “I’m going to bed.”

The tears Connor hadn’t shed prickle in his eyes and nose.

“Hank!”

Hank walks away, leaving the bottle where it stopped, and pulls the bedroom door shut behind him. They haven’t set up a way for Connor to get inside it without help. Hank’s walled himself off, left Connor alone, and it simultaneously feels like Connor’s been abandoned and like he’s absolutely destroyed their relationship.

With nothing else to do, Connor climbs up to the window seat and lifts himself into the cuckoo clock, burrowing down into his little nest and breathing deep. Hank’s scent is fading, gradually replaced by Connor’s own smell which turns, eventually, into nothing. He misses it already, like he misses Hank. His Hank.

Connor aches. The pain radiates out to his extremities and centers in on his chest, and he thinks to himself for the first time - _ I love him_.

It isn’t a surprise. Still, the fact that he’s only just realized now that they’ve hurt each other makes the suffering worse.

Connor squeezes his eyes shut against the tears. They leak out anyway, and wet his face, and he fruitlessly wishes that Hank might come back to find him and gently wipe them away.

* * *

Hank wakes up that next morning with a sick stomach. Between the speed with which he’d downed those beers and his lingering tension over the car spinning out, over his argument with Connor, over the look on that tiny face - he isn’t surprised. He groans even before he opens his eyes, flipping over to bury his face into the pillow. The sun must be up. He feels it warming him in a patch across his shoulders, and he curses himself for forgetting to pull the curtains before he fell asleep in a desperate attempt to escape how terrible he felt.

Connor had looked so frightened. It hurt Hank’s heart, both that Connor would actually believe that he could lift so much as a finger against him, and that he’d let his anger carry him so far that Connor had to think about it at all.

Now he’s going to have to deal with his fuck up, if Connor hadn’t let himself out through the window right away. He hopes not. It was dark out when he’d come home, and still snowing, and he hates thinking about Connor wandering around in the snow for days. How he’ll find him if the tracks are covered...

Turning onto his back, he opens his eyes and immediately squeezes them shut again. He’d looked right into the sun, shining down on him through a knothole.

...A knothole. 

Squinting, Hank looks up at where his ceiling should be and finds dark red wood instead. His window is gone, as is his bed, and in their place he finds what looks like the inside of a tree trunk. It’s furnished, somehow, as if by someone who’s worked with what they could find. Or at least, someone invested in making very large versions of ordinary things. There’s a quarter tucked up at one corner of the room, about as wide as Hank’s head, and he wonders what sort of person would go to the trouble of making something so big.

He might know, really. He’s known since Connor pricked him with a pin that there’s more out in the world than he’d wanted to believe. Still, he makes a point not to wonder how he got here, and why everything down to the perfectly preserved rose petals under the pillow seems to be much too large, and he climbs out of the bed.

There’s a door at the end of the room, covered by a series of leaves sewn together to make a curtain. Hank brushes it out of the way as he exits, careful not to disturb the fragile stitching, and finds himself in a little sitting room. Handmade cupboards and china cabinets line the rounded walls, with pressed flowers leaning against chairs and a few shiny things tucked up on hooks. At the table in the middle of the room, centered exactly on a woven rug, sits a woman. She watches Hank with a look of complete certainty, like she’s unsurprised to find him in what has to be her home.

“Hello,” she says. With one elegant gesture, she motions Hank toward an empty chair. “Would you care to sit?”

Hank pulls out the offered seat and sinks into it.

Raising an eyebrow, the woman looks him up and down with such an appraising manner that Hank feels like he’s one of his wood pieces. He wonders how much he’s worth.

“This isn’t my house, huh?” he says, twitching a corner of his mouth up.

The woman sighs. “I’m afraid not. That would be my doing, although I assure you it was a mistake.”

“Looking for someone else?”

“I was.”

Hank nods. He has a fair grasp on what’s happened now, but he still has to ask. “Are you Connor’s mother?”

She laughs. It sounds almost condescending, like she thinks herself above his questions and his apparent misunderstandings. Before Hank can take offense, she covers her mouth with a hand and composes herself again. “Goodness, no. I raised him, of course, but that isn’t quite the same. Shall we introduce ourselves?”

“Hank,” he says, putting out a hand. “Hank Anderson.”

When she takes it, her brown fingers cool against his sweaty palms, something changes. Hank sees shimmering in the air behind her, faint colors distinct from the wall and certainly not a trick of the light. They flutter, opening and shutting like butterfly wings.

The woman’s grip is firm, and she shakes hands better than anybody else he’s ever met. Hank thinks she should run business seminars.

“My name is Amanda.” She leans back in her seat. “I don’t have to ask whether you know Connor, then.”

Hank swallows a lump in his throat. “No,” he says. “I know him. He’s been, uh… living in my house for the season.”

“Did he tell you much about where he came from?”

“No. Not about any of this, or what he was.”

Amanda scoffs. A frown wrinkles her forehead, revealing deep lines that hint at her age. Hank can’t imagine that she’s much older or younger than he is, which doesn’t particularly make him feel good, but it’s hard for him to guess.

“Connor isn’t anything. If he’s unique, it is a byproduct of his upbringing.”

A bite of irritation gnaws at Hank. “Harsh thing to say about someone you raised,” he says. The idea that Connor is anything but special is laughable.

“You misunderstand me,” Amanda says, folding her hands in her lap. “Despite what his size may suggest, Connor is nothing but a human. I simply resized him to make him more manageable. Imagine my trying to keep a fully sized child in this tree. I had no intention of moving.”

Hank blinks, trying to remember if he’d ever seen Connor do any magic. He doesn’t think so… but then, he’d assumed that anyone that small had to have some sort of supernatural reasoning behind it. Connor had, apparently, but through Amanda. Not himself.

“He’s…” Hank searches for the right words, remembering how offended Connor had been when he’d outright asked what species he was. “He’s not like you?”

Amanda purses her lips. “I thought to explain this to Connor himself today. Seeing as the spell brought me the wrong person, I ought not to waste the conversation. Follow me.”

She leads him to yet another room, this one with a rounded exit that reminds him of Connor’s cuckoo clock. It looks out over a rounded patch surrounded by mushrooms standing like sentinels, creating a gate between the outside world and what must be Amanda’s garden. Despite the lingering winter chill and snow still clinging to the ground, green stalks sprout up with buds that are already unfurling.

“Is this a fairy ring?” Hank says.

Amanda lifts one eyebrow. “I’ve always been fascinated by the human ability of knowing more than I expect, and simultaneously nothing at all. But yes. This is _ my _fairy ring.” Placing her hand against the tree, she sighs. “I was here, thirty years ago, when a pair of human travelers broke the ring to pick my flowers. They were roses, freshly grown, and the humans snapped them off their branches with such clumsy force that it pulled up some of the roots. As a retaliation, I struck them with a curse.”

“You curse people?” Hank asks. He expects Amanda to be a little remorseful, maybe, but her lips turn up in a slightly self-satisfied smile.

“On occasion. This one was strong.”

“What was it?”

“I swore that they would bring suffering on the ones they loved, without considering what consequences my vague language would have.” With no change in tone, as if she were talking about the weather, she says, “They fell down dead. A man, and a woman. On her back, there was a baby in a carrier.”

“Connor,” Hank exhales.

“His parents were gone, and he’d been hit by the curse as well.” Amanda picks a bit of wood like a splinter from the tree and throws it out of the hole, smoothing down the spot so that it’s even. “He already had the stamp of my magic on him, so it was no trouble to shrink him down to my size. Despite what you may think of me, young man,” she says, throwing him a sideways glance, “I am not heartless.”

Hank doesn’t want to argue that point, even if he thinks Connor deserved better. “So you kept him. Weren’t you worried about your own curse?”

“I was not, and am not. I never assumed Connor would care enough about me for it to have any effect, and when it turned out I was wrong… well.” She spreads her hands in a dignified shrug. “Fairies don’t feel their own magic. Isn’t that lucky?”

“That doesn’t tell me why I’m here, though,” Hank says. “If the curse wouldn’t work, why did you try to bring Connor back now?”

Amanda turns to face him, directing all the intensity of her attention his way again. He hates it, actually. It makes him want to shrink from her, or to do whatever she asks so she’ll look somewhere else. Imagining a child thriving under a parent like Amanda is incredibly difficult… but then, Connor can be just as stubborn.

The thought of Connor sassing his literal fairy godmother makes Hank smile.

That same smile seems to give Amanda pause. She still looks at Hank like she’s dissecting him, but there's a warmth in her expression, almost a fondness. It looks strange on her. “In all these years,” she says, “the curse hasn’t mattered. Connor never left my garden, and never met anyone who wasn’t me. Last night… I felt it take. He fell in love.”

Those words hit Hank like he’s had an elephant dropped on him. His knees quiver, as do his hands, and his mouth hangs open. He can’t breathe. His heart starts to pound. It can’t be possible - he hates himself for caring for Connor like he does, well aware that any life for them would be impossible. Having his feelings reciprocated would be… He doesn’t even know. Nice? Unbelievable? Horrifying?

Amanda tuts and takes his chin in one hand, snapping his mouth shut with a click. Hank’s too startled even to pull away. “You look pale,” she says, still holding his beard, “and there is more to explain. Shall I make some tea?”

Without waiting for an answer, she sails back inside, her gossamer wings catching the daylight as she goes. Hank, subject to the worst daze in history, can do nothing but trail uselessly after.

* * *

It takes time for Connor to adjust to being so large. His space in Amanda’s tree had suited him very nicely, exactly the right size, and all the time he lived inside the fairy ring he never felt like too much or too little of anything - excluding his feelings about Amanda’s magical abilities, of course. Now, he stumbles around Hank’s bedroom like he’s never walked a day in his life. It is an unfamiliar space, if he gives himself credit, and Hank doesn’t keep it particularly neat. When he first shot out of bed, frantic with the discovery of his new predicament, he’d stumbled over piles of abandoned clothes and fallen flat on his face.

Looking in the mirror Hank has above his dresser, Connor frowns at the red mark on his cheek. He’d burned it skidding across the rug, and it hurts, but he forgets it quickly when he realizes the novelty of being almost precisely Hank’s height. The mirror hangs at an ideal sightline, just as it would for Hank, and Connor thinks with pleasure about how they might measure up if they stood next to each other.

He doesn’t wonder where Hank’s gone, or what happened to him. There’s no room for the thought. It crosses his mind for an instant, but he realizes soon after that the little shawl he made out of Hank’s shirt stayed the same size and was left behind somewhere. Then he decides to throw off his own white shirt, rough spun and worn after so many months without any mending. The clothes on the floor smell like Hank, just like the flannel had done for a while, but it’s stronger. He’d worn these recently. Connor remembers noticing one in particular, with a blue and white flower pattern that made Hank’s eyes look more lovely than ever.

“He won’t mind,” he says to himself.

The shirt is too big in the torso and arms, but he folds the sleeves back until they’re not in the way and tucks the extra fabric into his pants. It still doesn’t look quite right, but Connor is… happy. Exquisitely so, actually. He beams at himself in the mirror, rug burn entirely forgotten.

Connor likes being surrounded by Hank’s things. He always was, in a way, but it’s different now that he can really explore, can get his hands on things and _ learn _ instead of just see. He almost gets back in bed, to fit himself into the divot in Hank’s old mattress, but the half-open closet draws his attention instead. It’s messy, stuffed with clothes Connor hasn’t even seen Hank wear and stacked, unlabeled boxes. He pulls one down, unfolding the flaps and peeking inside.

Inside are more clothes, but these are entirely too small for Hank and too new to be his old things. They’re bigger than Connor was before he grew, but styled in a way that makes them look… childish. Decorated with bright colors and stamped with silly looking animals. All for a baby, Connor decides, but Hank had never mentioned a baby. The sizes keep going up, too, bigger and bigger, until at the bottom of the box he finds shirts and pants for a child. Still very small - so small, Connor can picture Hank holding them in his arms - but big enough to be impossible to hide. There can’t be any children here.

He opens the next box looking for more clothes, to see if maybe Hank’s child is an adult now. Grown up somewhere, living on their own… leaving their father alone in the woods, with no one but a fairy’s foundling for company. He hates the thought. Any child of Hank’s would be better than that.

Connor finds a bundle of black fabric instead. Lifting it free, he holds it up and tries to make sense of how it’s supposed to look, puzzling out the arms and legs until he lays it out on the bed. It looks nice, nicer than everything else Hank owns, but it’s all in black, and barely worn at all. Hank looks best with some color, a little bit of light. This… he can’t picture Hank in it. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t kept it out.

The clothes were hiding a picture frame, left face-down in the box and clearly untouched for many years. Hank had explained pictures to Connor, pointed out some he kept up on the walls. He knows what they are, and that they’re nearly always of silly things, but Connor still hesitates before turning it over. A bad feeling creeps its way into his gut, even as he tells himself it’s nothing to worry about.

A little boy stares up at him from the frame. He has curly hair, yellow and shining, and he’s laughing. His eyes are scrunched up, and his mouth is open, showing off crooked teeth with a gap between them.

Connor pulls loose a piece of paper, wedged into the frame. It’s folded several times to make a little book, and on the front Connor finds the same picture of the same boy.

“Cole Anderson,” he reads aloud, his voice shaking. “Gone too soon.”

The last things in the box are a dried flower and an old license plate, like the one on the back of Hank’s car. It’s bent and folded in a strange way, black where something had violently rubbed against it and scraped the paint.

Connor’s heart sits in his throat. Dropping the picture frame on the bed, he runs to the bedroom door and throws it open.

“Hank?” he calls.

Sumo, still laying in his place by the cuckoo clock, perks up his ears. When he sees Connor, there’s barely even a moment of obvious confusion before he’s up, whining and jumping from side to side. Connor gets on one knee and puts his hands out for Sumo to sniff, remembering Hank’s advice, but Sumo ignores the offering entirely and frisks over, pushing himself into Connor’s arms. He’s still so large, and still very soft. Connor buries his face in Sumo’s fur.

“Where is he?” he asks. “I have to talk to him.”

Sumo licks wherever he can reach, leaving a stripe of slobber up Connor’s arm.

If Connor woke up in Hank’s bed, maybe Hank woke up in Connor’s. Getting up, he approaches the window seat with soft steps, afraid of scaring Hank now that he’s so much bigger. He understands how it would be hard, how he might be frightened. Connor knew how to take care of himself, just like Hank does, but the thought of someone he loves being so small and breakable makes his chest hurt.

The cuckoo clock is empty. He knows that before he picks it up, peering inside with one eye, looking for any traces. He can’t see anything, but his nose catches something unmistakable: Amanda’s magic, still incredibly pungent and laying over Connor’s little house like a fine dust.

“Fuck,” he says.

Connor takes one of Hank’s coats, puts Sumo on a leash, and steps outside into the crisp chill - the last throes of winter.

“Come on,” he says, giving Sumo’s leash a quick tug. “We’ll find him.”

Sumo barks, long and loud, and he lets Connor lead the way.

* * *

“How do you know?” Hank asks. He’s holding a teacup and a tiny saucer, watching the steam rise in a lazy, twining sort of way. Whatever Amanda made the tea out of smells amazing, but his stomach still protests even the thought of ingesting something.

Across the table, Amanda sips from her cup and ignores him. She reminds Hank of a great Victorian lady, elegant and stern to an intimidating point. Then, when he least expects it, she surprises him.

“Here,” she says, reaching into a box in the middle of the table. She pulls out a leaf and tears a strip from it, handing it to Hank. “Peppermint will help your stomach. You’ve been making a sour face since I met you.”

Hank takes the strip and pokes it down into his cup, sucking the tea off his finger. “To be fair,” he says, “you did sort of magically kidnap me.” Setting his saucer on the table, Hank leaves the peppermint to steep. “How do you know Connor’s... in love?”

“It is my curse. I can feel when the magic takes effect.” She picks up a dainty serving spoon and stirs her tea with it. Hank wonders if she shrinks everything down to suit her size or simply makes it herself. “I had felt something brewing for some time, but I wasn’t moved to action until last night.”

“What was so special about last night?”

“He admitted it to himself.” Raising a hand, she shakes her head preemptively. “I don’t want details, Mr. Anderson, I can’t speak to Connor’s feelings beyond an admission that they exist.”

“Jesus,” Hank says, feeling his face go hotter than the sun, “it isn’t like that. I wouldn’t - you have to understand, I’d never hurt him.”

“No.” Amanda sighs. “I don’t believe you would.”

She goes back to her tea, and Hank picks up his cup to take a drink. It’s just the right side of too hot, and pleasant, and the fresh, sharp taste of peppermint does set him strangely at ease.

Amanda, he decides, isn’t that bad.

“I guess I only have one more question you can answer,” he says, when his cup is half gone. Amanda sets hers down and waits for him to continue. “Why did you shrink me down?”

He would have thought Amanda might be too stately to roll her eyes, but she does roll them, directly at him. If he weren’t so taken aback, he might have laughed.

“The curse changed your size, not me. I had nothing to do with it, and I can’t fix it.”

“It’s your curse,” Hank points out.

“I don’t choose the side effects. If I did, it wouldn’t have killed Connor’s parents in the first place.” Lifting her saucer to her mouth, she murmurs, perfectly audibly, “I do wish humans stopped to think sometimes.”

Hank grins and opens his mouth to retaliate, but he stops when he hears something loud and vaguely familiar in the distance. Amanda hears it, too. She turns her head toward the front entrance, her lips thinning as she grimaces.

“Someone’s brought their dog,” she says. Another bark proves her right. Rubbing her temples with one hand, she stands to collect the teapot sitting on a serving cart and pour herself another cup.

Hank stands up, nearly spilling his tea. “That’s _ my _ dog.”

He runs to the entrance, leaning as far out of the hole as he dares and trying not to think about slipping and plummeting to the ground far, far below him. There, at the edge of the fairy ring, is Sumo. He paces back and forth and makes a horrible racket, lifting his paws like he means to step over the mushrooms and then retreating again.

“Hey, bud!” Hank calls, cupping a hand around his mouth. “It’s okay! I’m here!”

Sumo yowls and drops to his belly, crawling toward the mushroom ring before he leaps away again.

“He’s not very well behaved,” Amanda says, coming to stand beside him.

Hank pushes his hair out of his face, looking for a way down. “He’s freaking out. I don’t know how he got out here, somebody put the leash on him, but-”

“Amanda!”

Hank recognizes that voice, too. He’s only ever heard it small, but he knows it like he knows his own. His heart thuds a little harder in his chest.

There he is, emerging from the trees - Connor. His cheeks are pink from the cold and from indignation, and he’s wearing Hank’s clothes, his shirt, his jacket. They’re too big on him, even though he has to be at least six feet tall now, and Hank’s whole body aches like he’s one giant bruise. He stops by Sumo, who curls up by his feet and sets to whining in a key so high, it’s almost inaudible.

“Amanda,” Connor says again. “Give him back.”

Amanda raises an eyebrow. There’s no way Connor can see it, but it Hank wonders if he feels its effect anyway. He certainly does.

“Connor!” he yells, leaning out of the hole in the tree. He isn’t sure if Connor will hear, but Connor’s head snaps up toward him. “It’s okay!”

“Hank?” Connor yells back. “Did she hurt you?”

Amanda scoffs.

“No, of course not! It was a misunderstanding!” Lowering his voice, he adds to Amanda, “How do I get down there?”

Amanda waves a hand, and he’s… on the ground, in an instant, like he’s always been there. Dry branches just beginning to grow back from the winter stretch above him, like a living canopy. Hank’s never been this close to nature before, not in a real and true way. Lying in the grass on a summer day - even living in the cabin, that’s different. He feels the earth breathe down here, air filling his lungs like it’s direct from the source. For a moment, he forgets everything, even Connor - and then it all rushes back, and he takes off running. He hasn’t done this in years, and he’s out of breath too quickly, but at the other end of the garden, Connor’s waiting. He’ll run for him.

When Hank reaches the mushrooms, Connor squats down and puts out both his hands. It’s a complete reversal of the way things used to be, but somehow, there’s nothing weird about it. With no uncertainty, Hank climbs up into Connor’s palm and holds on tight to his thumbs.

“You’re all right,” Connor says, wrapping his fingers gently around Hank.

“Yeah,” Hank says, squeezing where he can reach. “You’re wearing my clothes.”

Connor pouts. “They fit!”

Hank laughs, and Connor laughs too. Even if they’re the wrong sizes, even if nothing else about who they are and what they want works out, there’s so much joy just in… being here. Being together.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Hank explains. “Amanda tried to bring you back, and she got me instead.”

Connor frowns up at the tree, pulling Hank in a little closer. “She shouldn’t have. I was fine where I was.”

“I know.” Hank takes a deep breath, running his hand along the line between Connor’s fingernail and thumb. He gets it now, why Connor would touch him even idly, trying to feel his way around Hank. It’s reassuring, in a way, and fascinating. Nothing in the world like it. “I’m sorry I got so upset, Con. I never wanted you to see that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Connor murmurs. “I kept Amanda from you, and I… went looking in your closet. You said you had car trouble, last night. Is that what happened to Cole?”

It’s like a lance to the heart, hearing Cole’s name from someone else’s mouth - but then, he feels lighter, too. A heavy burden taken off his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. Tears burn at the corners of his eyes, and he blinks them away. “It doesn’t excuse my behavior, though. I shouldn’t have done what I did. Any of it. And I won’t do it again.”

“Okay.”

To Hank’s surprise, Connor blinks away his own tears. They shine on his face, bigger and more radiant than Hank’s ever seen them. All the little details he missed before are on full display now, every freckle and mole, the wrinkles under Connor’s eyes.

Connor must be thinking about him, too. He touches Hank gently with the tip of one finger.

“Are you stuck this way?”

Hank shrugs. Unsteadily, he climbs to his feet, almost losing his balance as Connor’s skin shifts under him.

“Amanda said she couldn’t fix it. Maybe in time, but…” He topples a little, cutting himself off. Connor curls his other hand around Hank, setting him steady. It’s bizarre, being so small and relying on someone to keep him safe. “We might be putting up with this for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor says again.

“Could be worse,” Hank says. “At least you’re a natural at carving, so we don’t have to worry about money. We could pass you off as my nephew.”

“I don’t want to be your nephew.”

He looks at Hank with such earnestness that any jokes or deflection seem like a disservice. Hank nods, and pats Connor’s fingers.

“Point is, we’ll figure it out. You’ll just have to put up with me being helpless for a bit.”

“You’ll learn,” Connor says. His smile is much more handsome up close. “It isn’t so bad.”

They’re close like this, closer than Hank thinks he ever brought Connor to his face. If he reaches out, he might be able to touch… so he tries, putting out his hand. He doesn’t even have to ask. Connor pulls him in a little closer, still cupping him carefully so that he doesn’t fall.

Slowly, with great care, Hank touches Connor’s bottom lip. His mouth opens, gently, and a gust of hot breath waves over Hank before Connor remembers himself and closes it again.

Connor’s gentle, and kind. He has aspects of a fairy’s capricious nature, including a surprising single-mindedness, but at his heart, Hank knows he’s good. He’s seen it, many times, especially now. Connor could have left Hank’s house and never come back, and yet he’s here, holding Hank gently and looking at him like he’s precious.

Amanda said he’d fallen in love. Hank hadn’t really believed her, but seeing it up close… he knows.

Hank decides not to cheapen this moment with words. It would have been impossible for him to put the burden of his feelings on Connor before, but now, being small seems to give him an inexorable sort of courage. He wants to climb to high places, to stand tall in the face of any creature, and to do things he wouldn’t have dared before.

He leans forward and kisses Connor. It’s only a small peck, his mouth at the corner of Connor’s, but it still feels monumental. He buzzes with it, the strange elation of a love confession flaring briefly into panic before it settles into a fizzing feeling in his stomach.

“Hank,” Connor murmurs, pulling his hands away.

Hank’s still buzzing, his body vibrating like somebody’s flipped a switch. Connor makes a face.

“Hank.”

It would be hard for Hank to explain what happens next. One minute he’s in Connor’s hands, shaking so violently that Connor’s shaking too, and then… he’s not. He’s standing on the ground, his feet tangled in a thicket of winter jasmine, and he’s holding Connor’s hands between his own. They are about the same size after all, although Hank has a few inches and more than a few pounds on Connor. He’s practically swimming in Hank’s clothes.

“I don’t understand,” Connor says. He’s lifting his arms and legs, checking himself over as if he’ll be able to see parts of him that shrank when the rest of his body didn’t. “How can I - and you, you’re…?”

“It’s like a story,” Hank says. He feels a smile curl across his face, settling there like it’s never going to leave again. “One that ends with true love’s kiss.”

Connor frowns until Hank takes his face in his hands, holding his jaw with all the reverence he can muster. It feels good to hold him like this, to sense the pulse jumping under Hank’s pinky, to be able to brush unruly brown hair away from Connor’s forehead.

“I don’t know any of those stories,” Connor whispers. He takes Hank’s wrists in both of his hands, holding him in place. That’s fine. Hank hadn’t intended to let go.

“I’ll tell you this one later.”

When their lips touch this time, everything feels perfect. They’re the right size for each other, and the right strength. Connor wraps his arms around Hank’s body and squeezes, bringing him in tight, and Hank keeps his touches sweeping and gentle like he’s soothing a wild animal. In a way, he really is.

The sound of a little throat clearing pulls them apart.

“I won’t keep you,” Amanda says. She hovers over Connor’s shoulder, her wings keeping her aloft with steady, even beats. “I only wanted to say goodbye.”

Connor tilts his head and purses his lips, in much the same way Amanda herself had done earlier. Even if they look nothing alike, the resemblance is strong.

“I still don’t understand,” Connor says. “Is this really all I am?”

“All is not the way I would put it,” she replies. “There’s some magic in you, still.” Sighing, she stills in the air and leans over to touch his cheek, her wrinkled brown hand against his smooth skin. It’s affectionate, and a little sad. It strikes Hank how hard it must be for Connor to leave behind the only family he’s ever truly known. Amanda is a lot, but it’s obvious she loves him.

“I’ll miss you,” Connor says.

When Amanda takes her hand away, she leaves behind a bit of sparkling dust. It settles into Connor’s skin like it belongs there, a funny mark easily mistaken for one of his freckles. “Come and see me in the spring.”

She leaves them then, disappearing back into her tree.

As soon as she’s gone, Hank hears a click like something snapping back into place. Birds begin chirping, melting snow drips down from the trees, and Sumo jumps up and begins barking all over again. He pushes himself against Hank’s legs, using his teeth to grab his pants and tug him out of the fairy ring. Laughing, Hank steps clear and drops down, opening his arms.

“We were worried,” Connor says, watching Sumo slobber on Hank’s face with an unbearable tenderness.

“Just a mistake.” Hank rubs Sumo’s neck one more time before he stands. Connor steps in and takes the dog’s place immediately, folding himself into Hank’s body like he can’t bear to be away. Hank runs a hand through his hair and kisses the top of his head. “I’ll explain it, if you want. All the parts I understand, anyway.”

Connor hums. Hank feels it against his neck, and thrills in that unusual sensation. “I’d like that. Can we go home first?”

“Sure, honey.” Hank bends to pick up Sumo’s leash and offers Connor his other hand. “Let’s get you home.”

The only sound as they walk back is the crunch of snow underfoot. It’s hard to say what’s on Connor’s mind. He squeezes Hank’s fingers every so often, like he wants to make sure they’re both still there. Hank, for his part, thinks about making a cup of coffee. He thinks about pouring the last of his leftover beers down the sink, and of taking down the circus he’d made so Connor could get around. Most of all, he thinks about building a fire and making a nest out of his blankets and pillows. He wants to sit with Connor, and to rest, and to kiss each freckle he could never see clearly before.

Hank wants to let the fire burn itself out, leaving no trace but a column of smoke twisting through the air from his chimney.

**Author's Note:**

> "And I wish I could explain you why I'm leavin'  
But there's some men need the winter and there's some men need the sun  
And there's some men need the changing of the seasons"  
-Shel Silverstein


End file.
